Category Archives: Psychology

In a discussion on Healing Trauma, the subject of talk therapy came up. While I’m not a psychologist, I can see the value of related therapies in digesting difficult experiences. Being able to talk it out with someone accepting can be valuable. That may be all it takes. However, if the issue has any depth, talking it out will only resolve it for the mind. If we don’t heal the deeper energetic source, that experience will come around again and shadow our life. Similarly, if there is a need to keep talking about it, the source or driver hasn’t been … Continue Reading… →

On this blog, I regularly speak of the value of healing and cleaning up to support our spiritual journey and quality of life. However, when we have an identified ego, we’re driven by a mind and intellect who see themselves as separate and in need of protection. The intellect divides and the mind judges, often as bad. You see this in spiritual circles in insisting on the “one truth,” the “nonduality manscape,” spiritual materialism, and so on. When the ego co-opts the healing process, there is the tendency to see ourselves as broken and needing repair. Ego knows it’s not … Continue Reading… →

Another conversation brought out further points around action. They mentioned the “Law of Reversed Effort” in this short article*. “The harder we try the less we shall succeed.” “The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and the results of proficiency come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent unknown quantity may take hold. We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to … Continue Reading… →

Recently, I saw an excellent article by John Welwood in Tricycle magazine called The Psychology of Awakening. Too often, awakening and psychological health are seen as different worlds even though they’re closely entwined. “…even among advanced spiritual practitioners, certain islands — unexamined complexes of personal and cultural conditioning, blind spots, or areas of self-deception — may often remain intact within the pure stream of their realization.” This is very true. They can remain unseen until events trigger them. Yet even then, if we see ourselves as separate from our humanity, we may excuse our bad behaviour or blame others. I’ve … Continue Reading… →

Previously, I wrote about Offering it Back, then Offering Back Everything. When we shift from being a “me” that wants to control into recognizing ourselves as wholeness, we can directly experience the benefits of offering everything that arises in life back to source. Our benefits, our achievements, our challenges – we can offer everything back. If you allow the flow of life, everything arises from source to help you heal, grow, or resolve. Curving it back to source continues the process. This amplifies the benefits and supports resolving what is completing. Where do you offer it back to? … Continue Reading… →

I wrote about Nature’s Support last spring but the topic has come around again from a different angle. There is an idea in eastern philosophy known as the support of nature. As we stop resisting life and instead learn to work with what is arising, we cooperate with the flow of life in and around us. Our desires are then fulfilled more easily, we can work out problems faster, and what we need just shows up. Keep in mind that everything that happens is being done. Our cooperation allows those who support us to support us more easily. … Continue Reading… →

The heavier emotions are “heavier” because they’re more tamas, more inertia. This doesn’t make them bad – inertia gives us a consistent physical form, for example. The key is balance. Life is a continual dance of homeostasis, of re-balancing the creative and destructive flows. Too much inertia and we get sluggish and lean towards dissolution. Dissolution helps resolve things but we don’t want the whole thing falling apart. That tamas aspect also ties those emotions more into our bodily state. Fear, for example, is closely tied to the fight, flight, freeze response. We experience a perceived threat, and the body … Continue Reading… →

The stages of development in consciousness are not just linear nor are they exclusive. Just like the stages of development studied in psychology, we are prominently in one stage and there is a progression. But we’re not in one box, then the next. For example, one can become an adult and still have unresolved child issues. Typically, it takes over a decade to mature fully into Self Realization. Yet it’s not unusual for other stages to unfold before that. Thus, we can still be clearing old ego self-concepts and contractions when we’re living Unity stage. And I’ve seen people still … Continue Reading… →

About 70 years ago, Abraham Maslow proposed a theory of self-actualization and helped found a new branch of psychology. He suggested that if you meet more basic needs like physical and safety, you can address higher relational and esteem needs. Once you meet most of your needs, you reach a place of self-actualization – of self-acceptance, freshness, equanimity, authenticity, and so forth. Later in life, Maslow saw self-transcendence as a possibility post-self-actualization. Self-transcendence is the primary topic of this website. You’ve probably seen images of his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow apparently didn’t use his model in this way. Recently, I … Continue Reading… →

After we wake up, we become conscious of remaining shadows more quickly. Often we’ll uncover challenges around fear, anger, and a wide assortment of contractions from unresolved experiences. In time, we’ll find they get more primitive and, to the intellect, less defined. The key is noticing reactivity and following it back to its roots to make it conscious. Then it can be resolved. Making it conscious is sometimes the last step in healing. The challenge is in facing our ghosts. If we adopt an attitude of being beyond such things or suppress what doesn’t feel “spiritual,” we will not heal … Continue Reading… →

As we shift into a greater awareness of our energy and feelings, we can find all sorts of contractions and resistance. But over time, simple awareness allows us to experience, release, and resolve whatever we discover. But usually there is some crusted areas like the heart chakra, covered for “protection” but thus constrained and made less conscious. There can also be some hard knots or nuts that are more so. Often quite old, these are very tight contractions. They can be so tight they become inflamed, much as a star can light up from intense gravitational forces. This inflammation … Continue Reading… →

There is a simple principle to understand about our life experiences. If there is an experience showing up in our life, it’s there for our benefit. The nasty customer, the meeting going sideways, the crazy drivers; all of it is there to show us something about ourselves or to resolve something in our history. Moving us forward or clearing the past. Yet all too often, we artfully deflect these experiences with narratives that put blame outside of ourselves or on some aspect of ourselves we diminish. We resist and call such experiences bad. This response reinforces and perpetuates what we … Continue Reading… →